Wednesday's postcard, and the continuing insurrection in our midst

October 18, 2023

Closeup of Cathedral Rock at the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in central Oregon

Error Jordan

It is our lot as technologically advanced, sentient beings that the world of troubles can arrive, via broadcast, as a flash flood with a virtual tide of rocks and mud. And so it is this week, with the violence in Israel stacked on top of the war in the Ukraine, stacked on top of what were already a loose pile of existential questions about the future of democracy, and the fate of the biosphere itself. It’s hard to resist looking away.

I don’t want to rush by the growing inferno in Israel. Like many Americans I’m connected to a family that sent three sons to Europe to fight Nazism and end the Holocaust. I was schooled on the story of Anne Frank but also deeply moved by the death of 23 year-old Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who, in 2003, was crushed to death by an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer while putting her body on the line to protest the wanton destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza. She could just as easily have been my daughter.

Against this fog of turmoil and grief enters a deeply flawed person whom I suspect is unknown, still, to most Americans but who embodies the biggest threat we face, now, as Americans. I’m not referring to Donald Trump, but to one of Trump’s most facile sycophants, a nine-term Republican Congressman from Ohio by the name of Jim Jordan.

In case you missed it yesterday (10/17), Jordan came within 17 votes of being elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the second most powerful governmental office, and second in the line of succession to the Presidency. One of the people who voted for him was Cathy McMorris Rodgers who represents Washington state’s 5th District, which encompasses Spokane. (If you live outside the Fifth and want to know how your Congressperson voted, you can find that here.)

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“Jim Jordan is an insurrectionist who has no place being second in line to the presidency,” Fanone said Monday. “I witnessed the deadly assault on our democracy with my own eyes, which is why it absolutely disgusts me that extreme Republicans could choose an insurrectionist and election denier as their leader—someone who knew about January 6th ahead of time yet did nothing to stop it. This is a very dark time for our democracy and should serve as a wake up call to all Americans that we can never take our democracy for granted.”